Pottawatomie County was carved out of
land originally given to the
Creek and
Seminole after their forced removal from Georgia and Florida. After the
Civil War, the Creek and Seminole were forced to cede their lands back to
the federal government, and the area of Pottawatomie County was used to
resettle the
Iowa,
Sac and Fox,
Absentee
Shawnee,
Potawatomi and
Kickapoo
tribes.

Non-Indian settlement began on September
22, 1891 when all the tribes except the Kickapoo agreed to land allotment,
where communal reservation land was divided and allotted to individual
members of the tribes. The remaining land was opened to settlement.

During the land run, Pottawatomie County
was organized as County "B" with Tecumseh as the county seat. In 1892, the
voters of the county elected to rename County "B" as Pottawatomie County
after the Potawatomi Indians.

In 1895, the Kickapoo gave up their land
rights and their land was given away to white settlers in the last land run
in Oklahoma.

In 1930, Shawnee, now bigger in size than
Tecumseh, was approved by the voters to become the new county seat

Tecumseh, originally
the County Seat, lost to the fast growing community of Shawnee.
Incidentally, Shawnee was also in competition for the State Capitol.
City leaders even went so far as to build a governorís house.

The oil and railroad
industries were vital to the development of some Pottawatomie County
towns and to the decline of others. Agriculture, however, remains a
mainstay of the Countyís economy. Pottawatomie County has two
institutions of higher education,
Oklahoma Baptist University and
St. Gregory's
University.